What is Industrial Engineering? If you’ve asked me before you’ve probably realized it is sort of hard to get a grasp on. It’s hard for me to get a grasp on. But as I start taking more “hard-core” IE classes, I get a better idea of some of the things involved.

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering are not concerned so much with designing products, but more in how products are produced. We are concerned with stuff like facility layout, determining how many operators to assign to a machine or how many machines to assign to an operator. We worry about inventory and figuring out how to meet production requirements based on sales forecasts. That's just a sample...

The joke was that David is a car geek, Tom is a computer geek, I am a math geek, and Kon…he’s just a geek.

Let’s modify my part in that equation. I officially am no longer a math geek, but a statistics geek. While related, there are some key differences. Math people delight in calculus and what's more, actually proving things like calculus. Stats, at least this brand, is more practically-oriented. IE is all about statistics, All four of my current classes (3 are IE classes) are delving or will delve into statistics. Stats, stats, stats. I’m getting warm fuzzies right now about them, though, so that’s a positive sign.

Even though I chafe at the thought of them, little social events centered around a theme really work. There was a welcome back barbeque this noon for IME (Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering) students. Barbequed hot dogs, a bunch of other junk food, it was great. I got acquainted with almost as many people in 20 minutes there than I had in months just hanging out going to class.

I wonder what Samson could have bench-pressed.